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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26368564">Five's Guide to Making Bread</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowersalesman/pseuds/flowersalesman'>flowersalesman</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Umbrella Academy (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Baking, Gen, Post-Apocalypse, changed rating to teen due to some description of dead bodies, i literally have no idea if theres any sort of comfort in here</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 07:02:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,746</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26368564</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowersalesman/pseuds/flowersalesman</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When he landed in the apocalypse, Five decided that he had to figure out how to take care of himself as long as he was there. And to do that, he would learn to bake bread.</p><p>(Or: Five has to come to terms with being completely alone at the end of the world)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dolores &amp; Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>43</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Five's Guide to Making Bread</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>had this on my mind literally the MOMENT i first saw that "run boy run" scene. love that shit.</p><p>is this a happy fic? not sure! probably not. is it an entertaining fic? i sure hope so, let me know.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Making bread was supposed to be the </span>
  <em>
    <span>easiest </span>
  </em>
  <span>fucking thing. That’s what Five remembered- he never cooked a thing in his life, but he knew shit, and he </span>
  <em>
    <span>knew </span>
  </em>
  <span>that bread had about two ingredients. Maybe four. Possibly even three?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Either way, it should not be difficult to figure out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The apocalypse made a cornucopia of findings. Since he arrived, Five had gathered more clothes than he ever owned in his life previously. Some of them, he wore- and </span>
  <em>
    <span>wow, </span>
  </em>
  <span>being able to put on whatever the hell he wanted was pretty freeing. Fuck Reginald, and whatever his thing about uniforms was.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He layered the other clothes together; coarse sweater wool on top of close-knit shirts on top of silk pajamas. With the first water he filtered, he cleaned a pot the best he could. The next batch of water he boiled over an open flame and drank.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was a week into this routine, with trips to harvest undamaged food from stores, that he felt confident enough in his resources to try and actually cook something. And in his previous research, before he got quantumly displaced, bread came across as the simplest food staple to bake.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Five didn’t have any recipes. But it couldn’t be </span>
  <em>
    <span>too </span>
  </em>
  <span>hard. It was just flour and water, probably.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He filtered and boiled about two cups of water, and ripped open a bag of flour he found in a rich man’s doomsday bunker. He pretended it was Reginald’s, and after reclaiming everything he could find, he broke apart all the bottles of alcohol on the ground to let it soak, took apart fireworks for their gunpowder, and threw a match over his shoulder.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The explosion didn’t make him feel any better. But it was a pretty nice sight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His slurry of a dough lined thinly on the glass pan he found. With the pan balanced on two metal tongs—from his last trip to the superstore—he balanced the pan over one of the many, many scattered fires.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And he waited. And waited.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Five only gave up when his arms were close to giving out. The result of his baking did not look like bread; it didn’t expand, and while the top was still the pale white of flour, he could see that the bottom burned black through the pan. It didn’t scrape off, either, which meant he destroyed a perfectly good tool.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Out of curiosity, he pried off a piece and ate it. Nothing more bland had ever touched his mouth. How did Mom </span>
  <em>
    <span>do </span>
  </em>
  <span>it everyday?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The glass pan immediately went flying and shattered into a wall, shards mixing with the rubble below.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>———</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Here’s the thing:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Five never buried his siblings.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The main reason was because it was a waste of energy. There was so much broken pavement and buildings on the ground, it would’ve taken </span>
  <em>
    <span>ages</span>
  </em>
  <span> to clear enough space for all of their graves, not to mention the actual act of digging six feet down for all five of them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(Why were there only five, anyway? Where was Six? Where was Mom, and Pogo? Where was </span>
  <em>
    <span>Dad?)</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>So, Five didn’t bury anyone. He was the only one left. There was no point. Either way, soon enough, he would figure out how to get back home, and the apocalypse wouldn’t happen because he would warn them first. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He just... had to learn how to take care of himself. Bake some bread. And then he’d find a way to get home.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>———</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The night he first tried to bake, he made a discovery. The “bread” (then broken along with the pan) only cooked through the bottom, where the heat was. Five almost cursed out loud then- </span>
  <em>
    <span>of course </span>
  </em>
  <span>he needed an oven. Of course. Why didn’t he think about that?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he and Seven were little, they </span>
  <em>
    <span>loved </span>
  </em>
  <span>to stare at whatever food was cooking in the oven when they could get away with it. How it would change color and make the kitchen smell cozy. Something in Mom’s programming allowed her to pretend they weren’t there, even while Dad was looking for them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He scrubbed bricks with steel wool. Scrubbed them until his fingers bled, until he could stop thinking about how at some point Seven stopped joining them, how Dad would make her lay her hands flat and smash them with a ruler if she tried to talk to them without permission. He was going to get home eventually. Everything would go back to normal then.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The “oven” was a pile of bricks, precariously balanced without any adhesive to keep them upright. Assembling it was like trying to build a house of cards; luckily, Five had made castles before. The bricks, while not clean, were at least free of dust, and the bloodstains soaked in until they were indistinguishable from the rest of the color.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took a couple of attempts to figure some things out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>First: it was probably better to use an actual bread pan. The glass pan he first used was too wide, he learned, and might’ve been better if he wanted to make crackers. Good thing he broke it before it came to that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Second: he could not simply </span>
  <em>
    <span>pour the batter in. </span>
  </em>
  <span>No, he had to </span>
  <em>
    <span>spray </span>
  </em>
  <span>it first, or else the whole thing would be ruined. It was a good thing he saw Mom cook plenty of times before.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(And really, fuck </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>...The grease spray thing. Not the Mom thing.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Thirdly: there was </span>
  <em>
    <span>definitely </span>
  </em>
  <span>some baking secret that he just wasn’t aware of. No matter what he did, no matter what combination of flour water salt sugar </span>
  <em>
    <span>whatever, </span>
  </em>
  <span>all that came out was a disgusting brick of a dough. The only real improvement was that the top was as burned as the bottom.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Five went over what he knew about bread. It was made from flour and water, and probably also something like salt or sugar for flavor, and you mixed it together... and then what?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was something he wasn’t remembering. Sitting around and thinking about it wasn’t going to help.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Most days, he tried to avoid travelling. It was better to conserve his energy, to take the stupid toy wagon he found and fill it with as much as he could find, and it was never a </span>
  <em>
    <span>lot </span>
  </em>
  <span>but he knew how to ration. His childhood was filled with weeks where Dad put them all on “diets.” Some other excuse to get them ready for the inevitable end of the world.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He didn’t want to admit that it helped. So he just ate a can of food in the morning and another can at night, and felt increasingly guilty as he wasted more and more flour and water trying to bake bread.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(There was another reason he didn’t like to explore. Some bodies died like a volcano, choked in ash and skin cooked, and others he only found when he dug too deep trying to find more food. Five might’ve decided to become a vegetarian, if the apocalypse didn't already force him.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Whining was useless. He tugged his scarf further over his mouth, pretending it didn’t smell like smoke, and told himself again to be grateful that he didn’t travel to a time when the air would’ve been too thick to breath. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The wagon creaked with every movement, the ground so uneven that its wheels were nearly useless. Five kept his head down. If he looked up, he’d only see the eerie horizon, snuffed from the raining ash. It kind of felt like he was in the middle of a wildfire.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He didn’t have to look up to be able to make his way to the superstore that used to stand nearby. Most of its produce was ruined and black on the ground. Even still, whatever was left was enough to sustain one person for at least a month. Longer if they rationed it, like he was.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Five only looked up when he passed by a line of shopping carts. Astonishingly enough, the store still had one standing window at the front. That window was why he searched it in the first place; if that one piece of glass made it, then the building itself probably had plenty of resources left.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He lengthened his strides, more confident in where he was going, and went straight to the canned vegetables section. Part of the reason he wore his scarf was to be able to get through it- otherwise, the putrid smell of rotting food would make him vomit (and he wasn’t going to make that mistake again).</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Most of his searching went like this: he shuffled through the mess, lightly kicking cans over to see which ones weren’t cracked and spilled. The ones that seemed fine he picked up and inspected one more time, before deciding whether to take it or throw it out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>None of the cans in the vegetables section were whole. Neither were the fruits, or the beans, or the pre-prepared canned meals. Five kept his breathing under control, even as his hands started to shake so much he could barely hold onto the cans.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logically, it made sense that the store would have a finite supply. It made sense that he would, after a couple weeks of looting the area, that he would find all the undamaged food there and have to find a new store. That’s what he tried to tell himself, over and over. It was fine. It was expected.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What he couldn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>stop </span>
  </em>
  <span>telling himself was that his new way of life wasn’t sustainable- eventually, there would be no food to find. Eventually, everything would be rotten, and what would Five do then? Would he starve, the loneliest person in the world? Without ever seeing his family again?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The next can he picked up was oddly light, but had no cracks or leakage on it. The label was still on, and he could barely make out the letters </span>
  <em>
    <span>Rai_i_ Br__d.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Raisin bread. The only damned food that place had left was </span>
  <em>
    <span>bread.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Five threw it to the ground and stormed out, empty wagon in tow. He didn’t want any fucking bread, and it didn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>matter </span>
  </em>
  <span>how long the canned food would last, because he would make it home before it could become a problem.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>On his way back to his campsite, with his head held high, he spotted a department store with three and a half walls still standing. From it, he grabbed a new pair of boots and, on a whim, a broken mannequin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Computer programmers often solved problems by explaining their process to rubber ducks. Maybe having something to talk at would help him figure out a way to get back to his family.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he reached his little hovel, made from three standing walls and a good amount of curtains, he immediately set up the mannequin in the corner. After a moment of contemplation, he turned its head to face the wall.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then he turned on his heel and walked right back out. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>had </span>
  </em>
  <span>to get home. He had no leads, no clue on how to get back. The one person who might have had </span>
  <em>
    <span>any </span>
  </em>
  <span>idea was Reginald. Luckily, the man owned a personal library. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>With only a hint of hesitation, he made his way to the ruins of his home.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>———</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Five stood on top of a rock, staring down at what he left behind.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His siblings were strangers to him. Their dead faces still stared towards nothing, and flies had taken to their corpses. He wouldn’t even </span>
  <em>
    <span>recognize </span>
  </em>
  <span>them, if he didn’t see them all together. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He tugged his scarf higher and soldiered forward. They didn’t need to be buried, because it didn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>matter. </span>
  </em>
  <span>He was going to go home soon, possibly even that same day if he could find anything in Dad’s library.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The rubble was hard to sort through. His hands kept on cramping. Sometimes he wished he could do something other than teleport, because fat lot of good </span>
  <em>
    <span>that </span>
  </em>
  <span>was doing him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The rest of his day was spent digging down into the library. Five collapsed the moment he saw a torn piece of paper, fluttering between two rocks, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>god </span>
  </em>
  <span>he was so tired.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He blinked once, hard, and slapped his face. Focus. When he was home, he could rest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Almost everything was ruined. After hours of digging, he could only find around thirty legible books, and most of them were about macrobiology.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Five was nearly done when he caught a glimpse of a golden hardcover, dirtied and ripped. It looked oddly familiar.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fishing it out took ten more minutes. When he dusted off the cover, he recognized it as one of Six’s favorite books- something about the history of Egypt. Five never saw the appeal. They would never have the chance to actually </span>
  <em>
    <span>go </span>
  </em>
  <span>there, anyway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Out of curiosity, he opened it to the table of contents. A glaring word caught his eye, partway down the page.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Bread.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Did ancient Egyptians bake bread?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He settled on the ground and crossed his legs. The ground scratched at his pants, and he still had to very determinedly ignore the smell in the air, but all his focus ended up on the book as he flipped to the right page.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bread. Bread. What did Egypt know about bread? Was finding out really more important than trying to find more of Dad’s books?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He found the page, headlined with a large loaf of french bread, ironically enough. Dad’s books didn’t matter anyway- nothing useful was left, and he was so against time travel that Five doubted he’d have anything of use.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Apparently, bread was a little more complicated than he thought. The Egyptians managed to figure out how to use a fungus, called </span>
  <em>
    <span>yeast, </span>
  </em>
  <span>to make bread rise. It was implied that most people in modern times bought yeast at a store.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Five slammed the book shut and shot up from his seat. Right. There was the lead. He just had to go to a store, find yeast (what container did it come in, anyway?) and then he would </span>
  <em>
    <span>finally </span>
  </em>
  <span>be able to make some fresh fucking bread.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He flashed out of his house, and he did not think about his siblings.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They didn’t need to be buried. He was going to see them soon enough, anyway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>———</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It still didn’t work.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It </span>
  <em>
    <span>still </span>
  </em>
  <span>didn’t work.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even after reading that book, that </span>
  <em>
    <span>fucking </span>
  </em>
  <span>book that Six used to be obsessed with- trying for </span>
  <em>
    <span>days </span>
  </em>
  <span>to find yeast, figuring out how to build a fire that wouldn’t immediately burn the bread, how to mix it in what proportions so that it would be an </span>
  <em>
    <span>actual </span>
  </em>
  <span>dough, and it still didn’t work. The bread that came out was browned but tough, and it looked like it </span>
  <em>
    <span>deflated</span>
  </em>
  <span> even after he remembered to let it expand beforehand.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Five’s eyes burned. Failing wasn’t reason enough to cry. That wasn’t even the first time he ruined a batch of dough; he should be used to it. There was no logical reason why </span>
  <em>
    <span>this </span>
  </em>
  <span>time would be worse than all the other times.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The thing was, his head felt a bit like a pressure valve. Steam kept on building up, right at the front of his brain, and it kept on piling and piling and piling, and he didn’t know how to let it out without completely breaking down. The discovery of yeast let a little bit of the pressure loose; the fact that it didn’t magically fix his bread cracked his head entirely.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If Dad were there, he would tell him to stop being ridiculous. That he was being weak and letting himself be ruled by emotions. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Stop that right now, Number Five, or you will be punished.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Five screwed his eyes shut and balled his fists, nails digging into his skin, and he </span>
  <em>
    <span>screeched.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>There was no force in the world that could express how he felt. He stood firmly with his knees slightly bent and his back hunched and he tried to let out all the steam through his mouth, but his head still hurt, and his eyes were still burning, and the screech turned into an angry sob.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The oven was back to being a pile of dirty bricks. Five’s foot stung where he kicked it, but he couldn’t even remember moving. His next scream was broken up with wails. Tears streamed unpleasantly down his face and dripped into the scarf looped around his neck.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He spun around towards the wall of the ruined building he lived in, and punched it as hard as he could. It didn’t give, and his hand only hurt more for it. He screamed louder and punched it again, over and over, until both his hands were ripped bloody and numb from pain.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Control yourself, Number Five,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Dad said in his head. </span>
  <em>
    <span>It is unbecoming to act like this. Be rational. Stop expressing.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Five gripped his head in both his hands and yelled, </span>
  <em>
    <span>"FUCK!"</span>
  </em>
  <span> at the top of his lungs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Normally, he’d get told off for swearing. Dad didn’t actually care, but Pogo </span>
  <em>
    <span>hated </span>
  </em>
  <span>it- said that to lose manners was to lose your mouth, or something. Four always made fun of it when he wasn’t around. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The thought made him scream, “Fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>FUCK,</span>
  </em>
  <span> piece of a </span>
  <em>
    <span>shit bitch, </span>
  </em>
  <span>damn crappy ASS!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It felt a bit like giving in, somehow. Pogo wasn’t there to stop him. </span>
  <em>
    <span>No one </span>
  </em>
  <span>was there, because their bodies were still laying in the rubble of a blown up mansion. And he didn’t even have the decency to </span>
  <em>
    <span>give them a funeral.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Dad was right. Dad was </span>
  <em>
    <span>always </span>
  </em>
  <span>right, and Five was paying for it with indefinite solitary confinement on a ruined planet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He squeezed his head harder, for just a few seconds, and let go. His hands twitched and burned. Five was going to have to take care of it himself, because </span>
  <em>
    <span>of course </span>
  </em>
  <span>he was, because there was no Mom or Four or Seven to help him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I just have to think this through,” he said to himself, wrapping his hands tightly with torn rags. “Bread needs flour, yeast, and water. And sugar and salt, I guess. The yeast is supposed to make it rise. Why </span>
  <em>
    <span>won’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>it rise? Are the proportions wrong?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He glanced up, and caught sight of the mannequin. Its head was still facing the wall. That didn’t matter; it worked well as a rubber duck regardless of how it was situated.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The ingredients are the thing I’m most confident about right now,” he continued. “Maybe it’s the process? That should’ve been pretty straightforward. You mix the ingredients, let it rise, and then-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He froze. There was </span>
  <em>
    <span>something </span>
  </em>
  <span>there. A little thread, niggling at his mind, reminding him of growing up and catching snatches of words about baking.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kneading? Was that it? Did he have to </span>
  <em>
    <span>knead </span>
  </em>
  <span>the dough? How would he do that? And at what part of the process?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How would that even help, anyway?” he asked out loud. “I’m already </span>
  <em>
    <span>mixing </span>
  </em>
  <span>it. Isn’t that kneading?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was no answer. Of </span>
  <em>
    <span>course </span>
  </em>
  <span>there wasn’t.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Out loud, he said, “I’m just going to sleep now. I’ll experiment more tomorrow.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Talking to the mannequin definitely relieved more stress than he thought it would, even for a minute. The rubber duck thing really had something going for it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>———</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Here was how Five made bread:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He poured some water into his bread pan. Then he poured in sugar, and yeast, and waited until he could see bubbles, per the instructions on the jar. Then he added flour, and mixed with his bare hands until it formed into a dough. After picking it up and spraying the bread pan, he put the dough back in, and set it aside with a damp cloth to let it rise. (Another lesson he learned recently- it would dry out, otherwise.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His throat was parched. All of his water was in that bread. He had to filter more, or search for plastic bottles.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Five checked on the dough periodically until it had grown to a size that satisfied him. Then, </span>
  <em>
    <span>carefully, </span>
  </em>
  <span>he punched it down, folded it over itself, and flipped it over. The damp cloth was replaced, and he waited longer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The mannequin in the corner stared at him. When did he turn her head back around? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Once the bread rose again, he removed the cloth and shoved the pan into his rebuilt oven, already hot. The brick he settled in front prevented him from being able to watch it cook, but every ten minutes or so he’d nudge it aside, hope rising like sewer sludge in his chest, pricking at the corners of his eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The bread was carefully removed with tongs once the top was golden brown. It had actually </span>
  <em>
    <span>risen, </span>
  </em>
  <span>and it looked like real bread. Five upended the loaf into his palms and juggled it around as he tore off a portion, leaving the rest in the bread pan.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Steam rose up into his face and it burned. He shoved the entire serving into his mouth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The pinpricks in his eyes quickly turned to tears, because it tasted like </span>
  <em>
    <span>actual bread. </span>
  </em>
  <span>It was fluffy, and light, and maybe a bit bland but </span>
  <em>
    <span>he made it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He scarfed down the rest of the bread as soon as it cooled off. Then he stood up and left his campsite.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Five </span>
  <em>
    <span>will </span>
  </em>
  <span>go home. He will figure it out. He was a survivor, and no matter what happened, he could figure something out and make it through the other end. His mistake will </span>
  <em>
    <span>not </span>
  </em>
  <span>be his grave.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And, maybe, it would take longer than he wanted. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe, he thought, as his dead siblings came into view, maybe he </span>
  <em>
    <span>would </span>
  </em>
  <span>have to stay for a while. More than a year, even. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A mass grave took shape under his fingers. His siblings, rotting and foul, landed inside, one after another. He couldn’t recognize their faces. He didn’t know who they were anymore.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No matter how long it took, Five </span>
  <em>
    <span>will not </span>
  </em>
  <span>become a stranger to them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>———</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The campsite was quickly packed. In the end, Five didn’t own more than a couple cans of food and a dead-eyed mannequin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>...That was kind of mean. Technically, she was his only companion. She deserved to be called </span>
  <em>
    <span>something. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>As he settled her on the wagon, he made his decision.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Alright, Delores," Five said, standing up and tugging her along, “let’s go.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And he knew she wasn't real. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>knew </span>
  </em>
  <span>she couldn't talk.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But he still liked to imagine that she said, "Lead the way."</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>can u believe i thought this was going to be more funny than it actually is</p></blockquote></div></div>
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